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Song MeaningBasically it means you go through some tough times, but you get back on your feet and everything is all good, you're happy, the outlook is great, it's a beautiful day, then something bad happens again, you just deal with it. He's asking have you ever seen the rain? yeah, it's depressing but it goes away. Don't think it doesn't.

Life will throw at us rains.... for some the rain can last longer than for some, just like some countries have longer months of rain than others. We don't wait for the rain to go away, we raise above and when the sun comes back, great, but we don't just depend on the sun, we fly above the rain!

General Commenti remember when my father used to play this song when we'd go on car trips. i was very young at the time and i hated it because it seemed so depressing, like one of those "i pity myself" songs. but now that i'm older it's taken on a new meaning and that is what's so great about songs like these - there's so much room for interpretation.

...with every rainy day will come another sunny day. but the part that really gets me is when he asks "i want to know, have you ever seen the rain?" - it's a common human experience to feel the ups and downs he describes in the song, and to say "no" to this question would be to deny that you are human, that you do cry, you can laugh and that life isn't always pleasant. it isn't a "pity myself" song; it's more of a "can you connect to your fellow human being?" kind of song. i hope i make sense.

General CommentMark Deming of AllMusic.com suggests that this song is about the shifting focus on idealism that started around 1970. In the wake of events like Altamont and Kent State, the idealistic energy of the youth turned into the "self-centered decadence of the '70s." Fogerty suggests that the issues worth fighting for in the '60s are still present in the '70s, "but that we had lost the courage and the vision to face up to them." It's an interesting point he raises. (Quotes belong to Deming, not Fogerty)

General CommentEbowtheletter the full band never recorded an other album after this. Tom left before the tour following this album. In addition, the last CCR album was in fact different then any other, with Stu Cook and Doug “Cosmo” Clifford writing and sings on some songs. The band was dead before that last album, and the member are the first to admit it today. John did in fact write this song about the band falling apart. They where still playing hits (ie the sunny day) but he could still feel the rain.

Song Meaningi really think the meaning to this song is how everybody thinks after the war, everything and everyone will be good again.. "When it's over, so they say, It'll rain a sunny day...".... but hes asking if you have seen the rain, meaning "have you seen the soldiers die?".. and hes saying that everything and everyone is NOT going to be well again... someone told me that CCR was playing during the vietnam war so ya thats the meaning.. Do you think so???

My InterpretationFor those of you who haven't experienced what I'm about to say... Picture this: It's a "sunny day" in 1968, and you are walking on patrol in the dense jungles of Southeast Asia... it's very quiet (the "calm before the storm"), and there is "rain" coming down on this sunny day... but wait! ... It is not rain at all... It is Dioxin, and the droplets are "shinin' down like water"! DIOXIN was a chemical agent, a defoliant sprayed from the air in Vietnam to eliminate the heavy vegetation used to hide enemy positions. Dioxin was shipped to Vietnam in 55 gallon black barrels with a painted ring around the barrel. The ring was orange... Hence the code name "Agent Orange". Anyway, unlike the "fortunate sons" who never had to experience that "bad moon risin'", I often wondered, as the drops of dioxin gathered on my skin... "who'll stop the rain". Finally, to the children who lost Fathers in the Vietnam war... Remember when Daddy was leaving to go to war?... and he "took you by the hand" and said "someday you'll understand"... well, as we all know... "someday never comes". John Fogerty was very emotionally connected to us Vietnam Warriors, as were so many other bands of that era. My absolute favorite was a tearjerker titled "Home" by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. A true masterpiece. God bless our troops!

Serioparanah, NIXON'S FANTASY??? Nixon was the one who brought the troops home from Vietnam. Johnson, a Democrat, escalated it into a full blown war. I'm not a fan of either. I am a fan of the facts. What happened to our troops was a crime perpetrated by the Powers That Be on BOTH SIDES of the political spectrum.